If developers had pursued this corner near Union Square a generation before, the two-story building that once held a "school for private secretaries" would have been replaced by something new from bottom to top. But as the virtues of preservation took hold, planners tried to balance the present and past. Here, the balancing act dropped four stories atop two, a thickly detailed addition that outweighs any real sense of what was. It serves as a cautionary tale of how cities evolve, part of a learning curve that continues to be refined.